title: The impact of food allergies on quality of life.
abstract: CME EDUCATIONAL OBJECTIVES 1. Recognize and appreciate the impact of food allergies on psychosocial health. 2. List the factors that have been shown to negatively affect health-related quality of life. 3. Understand how physicians can directly help to improve a child's quality of life while living with food allergies. Food allergy is a serious problem affecting a growing number of children worldwide. There is a large body of evidence supporting the detrimental effects that food allergy can have on a child's quality of life. With validated tools, we can identify these children and focus on how to protect, guide, and help them to live a safe life. Recent research articulates how food allergies impact health-related quality of life (HRQL). There are studies reported from the child's perspective, as well as studies reported from the parent's perspective. With the development of validated disease and age-specific questionnaires, researchers can reliably gather data on the psychological aspect of children with food allergies. The purpose of this article is to provide a review of the literature examining the psycho-social impact of food allergies on children. This article was designed to outline suggestions to help physicians care for the whole child - both mind and body.
authors.affiliation: Immunology and Allergy, Stanford Alliance For Food Allergy Research SAFAR, Mountain View, CA 94040, USA. lbacal@stanford.edu
authors.forename: Liane R
authors.initials: LR
authors.lastname: Bacal
mesh_terms: D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D001007:Anxiety / Q000209:etiology; D058445:Bullying; D002648:Child; D017281:Cost of Illness; D054541:Family Conflict; D005512:Food Hypersensitivity / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans; D010287:Parent-Child Relations; D010290:Parents / Q000523:psychology; D010819:Physician's Role; D010817:Physician-Patient Relations; D011788:Quality of Life / Q000523:psychology*; D013240:Stereotyping